Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.

“You only get five minutes a day to feel sorry for yourself.” (pg. 135) Almost finish reading the book, but I felt like there is no surprise, no spotlights and no new ideas in this book. Each Chapter just told stories happened to the families, friends and lovers. Anyway, just like the first sentence I mentioned in this paragraph, we still could find something like that from the book that Cynthia Kadohata wanted to show us. 

The whole story was set in the future during the 2050s in Los Angels. Francie was a nineteen years old girl whose parents died very earlier when she was still a kid. She lived with her auntie Annie, and made some deliveries for her aunt. After having a very serious traffic accident, she moved out, and found a job for a living by herself. We could see Francie’s life was tough, and also, she was a tough girl. Her mother was a Japanese and her father was a Chinese. She was a special girl not because her parents but her attitude to her life. She never hesitated helping people. Because of her experience, she could always get in touch with feeling of her friends when they had problems. We could see how she treated her aunt, Annie, her friend, Jewel and her boy friend, Mark.  

During 2050s, the city was filled with violence, life was degenerate, and the people were hopeless and used to it. The color of the city was gray. I thought the author set up the whole novel with this color just like she mentioned the weather of Los Angel couple times. She might think that would be the tendency that the world would go to with so far. Not just violence, we also have seen that in this book, the relationship among the people was kind of weird. Some of them became numb and cold blood; on the other hand, in the hopeless world, the author tried to present the character of the novel, Francie, as the person who still tried to change her life, and lived with hope. “They held expectations of the world, whereas what we had was hope. That never changed for me.” She never lost hope. Even though her aunt’s boy friend, Rohn, had been arrested for a year she still thought Rohn would come back. It also showed she was rigid. As when she was ready for a tattoo, Carl told her “I am not going to lie and say it doesn’t hurt, but if you want a tattoo, it’s worth it!” I am pretty sure it was also what Francie thought. Not just the tattoo, but also ideal to her life. It was telling you if you think it’s worth it, then do not lose your hope, and do not give up. 

When some people are ready to go to sleep in the evening they will think the world is too hard for them, but the next morning when they get up they still need to do whatever they have to do. So people do not really have choices. If not, they only have two options: live or die. If you choose to live, be like Francie to be rigid and hopeful.

In the second half of In the Heart of the Valley of Love, there is a strong sense of time and a pang of wanting to be remembered. From the mentioning of typing has become a lost art, the star-spangled banner being played on the tv, days spent by the lake in the boathouse, Auntie Annie’s shopping spree memories, and to Nadine’s speech on never forgetting because it makes who you are, everything has become ephemeral but everyone is still seeking some type of permanence.

When mentioning Aunt Annie, it was all about how it used to be when going to the shopping mall was the norm. Now though, remembering and trying to reenact those times just brings about a strong sadness that those times are gone. Even Madeline, with all her beautiful beads, creates beautiful beaded necklaces for herself only to be never worn. And those beads are counted continuously only to be inventoried and later sold off.

For Francie and Mark, they decide to get tattoos with Francie choosing a vine around her wrist. The wine visually is just a circle, which also represents infinity, with no end and no beginning. And when you think of tattoos, you think of permanence, but even Carl the artist remarks on how the color will eventually fade in ten years. Not even the tattoos will last. This goes to show that nothing lasts, not even the structure society collapses. However, it is interesting to note that while it is 2052 in LA, these stories could easily, tragically, have been told within present-day Los Angeles. Jewel is trapped in an abusive affair, people behind walls argue and brawl, the people on the street carry guns, random violence is rampant.

In the book, “In the Heart of the Valley of Love,” two relationships can be compared to that of Jewel and Teddy: Lily’s parents and Nadine and Geoffrey. Jewel is Francie’s friend who also works at the campus newspaper as the managing editor and Teddy is her boyfriend. Lily was Francie’s friend growing up in Chicago, whose father used to beat her mother until she left him. Nadine is Francie’s cousin and her boyfriend was Geoffrey.
It is known to Francie as well as others that Teddy had beaten Jewel in the past yet she still bailed him out of jail because she felt that she owed him. As she said, “sometimes he’s lent me money when I really needed it, and whenever I’ve been desperately unhappy he’s put aside what he was doing to be with me” (68). Despite the fact that he beat her, she still felt that she loved him. When talking about the situation of Lily’s parents, Francie talked about how she and Lily used to try and please Lily’s father after he beat her mother. They would clean the kitchen, hoping for some acknowledgment from Lily’s abusive father. She compared that to Jewel bailing out Teddy. Jewel tried to please Teddy, hoping for some recognition.
Later, after getting her tattoo, Francie, Mark, and Carl had a talk with Jewel because she was upset. Jewel suspected that Teddy was cheating on her with another woman. Mark was appalled because he felt that she was wrongfully troubled because he was hurting someone else rather than her. As they have the talk, Francie again remembers Lily and her parents. In her head, Francie said “I didn’t know what kind of world this was, where a violent man’s infidelity might hurt a woman more than his beatings” (133). Her thought reigns true for the situation that Jewel was in. She was sad that he beat her but even more sad that he was with another woman.
The way Francie saw the relationship between her cousin Nadine and her boyfriend, Geoffrey, was similar to Jewel and Teddy’s relationship. Nadine lived with Francie in Chicago when Francie was 11 and Nadine was 17. She was going out with Geoffrey, a boy three years older. One night, they were arguing and Francie wondered. She said, “Maybe they were falling out of love but didn’t want to. Maybe they were falling more in love and couldn’t handle it” (155). That can be compared to Jewel and Teddy. They said that they were in love with each other, but they didn’t act like it. Jewel said she stayed with Teddy because he had a mansion in his head and he said he liked the fact that it was a challenge to control her. It cannot be fully known whether they truly do love each other.

In the book Mark and Francie argue about what they consider to be right and wrong when they were spying on the school administrator that supposedly was involved with a student that was a prostitute. The author has Mark and Francie having this conversation twice in the book so far, once on page 85 then again on page 147. In the first discussion that Francie and Mark have, Francie claims that what the administrator is doing is a conflict of interest and when Mark asks her what that exactly means she says she doesn’t know, but says that what the administrator is doing is wrong. Mark thinks that not everything is considered right or wrong and says it depends on the situation and sometimes it doesn’t even matter whether something a person did was right or wrong. The second time this occurs Francie and Mark see the administrator at the beach with a young man. Francie says that if the young man was a student then what the administrator was doing was a conflict of interest and the young man could be looking for some kind of advantages. Mark says nothing to this in the book, but Francie in a way talks for him by describing what she thought Mark believed. She says that Mark believes that every world has their own set of morals and there are many different worlds. Since Francie uses the term conflict of interest again she seems to
Francie seems to be a person that has her ideas of right and wrong built into her like she just believes the things that she was told is true. Mark compared her idea of right and wrong to the laws of physics saying that Francie thinks that there are set lists of actions that are considered right and wrong. This kind of morals seems to be the kind of things that are built in and not really questioned. When asked what she meant by a conflict of interest she says she doesn’t know and just considers the administrator to be wrong. She does not think about the situation that the people might be in like Mark does and just judges what is going on purely on what is happening. Mark on the other hand thinks that right and wrong are flexible depending on what the person is going through. He uses the example of stealing money from parents as an example to explain that there isn’t a set of morals for everyone to believe in. Mark asks if a child steals money from his parents should he tell his parents that he took it and Francine says yes, then he adds what if they were going to hit the child should he still tell and Francine says no if they’re going to hit the child. This is the flexibility in right and wrong that Mark Believes. As Francie described it there are many worlds with its own set of morals. A different world could mean a different person so many different worlds with their own sets of morals can mean that every person has a different idea of what is right and wrong.
Most people if not all seem to be a Mark or a Francie. People like Francie have right and wrong built into them and that think that certain things are just wrong. Others are like Mark who believes that everyone has their own set of morals and the belief of right and wrong are different for different people. Although Francie believed that the boy in Mark’s example should have told his parents about the money she then said he shouldn’t when Mark added that the boy was threatened. It seems the line between right and wrong seem very blurred whether you are a Mark or a Francie.

Set in a future that is much like in the Parables, there is a great divide between the wealthy and the poor. The economic division that exist in In The Heart of The Valley of Love, seems to be a more of a present and driving a force in the book compared to in the Parables. In the beginning of the book, the economic divide is first pointed out through the descriptions of richtown. The rich live in forted communities (i.e. richtown) much like those in the Parables, while the poor and struggling live in crowded neighborhoods or ghettoes. Along with this first glimpse into the economic divide in the book, there is also a glimpse of the racial divide that goes along with it. The people who are rich and live in huge houses in their forted communities are white, while the other majority of the population made up of nonwhites are struggling to barely get by in the crowded neighborhoods or ghettos.
In addition to the racial divide, the economic divide fosters a further division involving education. The rich get to go to universities and the less fortunate go to a two year college if they can, which has only an age requirement of 18 and knowing how to read. This extension of the economic divide further divides the rich and struggling individuals. The division is also further emphasized when Francie talks about the people she meets at the school paper. In the book she describes the people she meets at the paper to a have a cunning that she envied and feared. However, she eventually realized the cunning that the people in the paper had she had too, and that the cunningness she was drawn too was actually hope.
This connection of hope that she shares with the other individuals in the school paper she uses to expose another division that is driven by the economic divide within the book. In Francie’s eyes, there seems to be a distinct difference in mindset between the students who go to universities and those who go to the two-year college. The difference between the two groups of students is that the rich students have expectations of the world and the students who struggle have hope and expected nothing. This expectation verses hope attitude difference driven by the economic separations, is also discussed further later on the book on page 121 when she talks about the poor that live on the street. She describes their living arrangements on the street as being harder then hers, and having a lesser chance of survival. Acutely aware of this harshness that they endure, the poor, Francie describe, still are able to wake up in the morning and continue on with their lives, which can be seen as a demonstration of unspoken hope.
This economic division that extends and drives the other divisions of race, education, livelihood, and attitude toward life in the book is a direct reflection of the world around us today. The division between the wealthy and the struggling in America also leads to other divisions. There is the division between the upper class, wealthy whites and struggling, middle/lower class predominantly nonwhites. There is also the division between those who are able to attend college and those who cannot. Plus the division between those who live in huge houses in wealthy gated communities and those who struggle to survive in the ghetto or homes, struggling to be kept. The attitude of the privileged and those who are not can also bee seen in America today. The wealthy have the money and the statues to move through life with ease, which in turn also allow their children to do the same and in some cases expect it from the world. However, for the others in the country who do not have the ease to move through life with out thought expect nothing, and in turn their children also expect nothing of the world. All that the struggling can do is work hard and hope to achieve what they are reaching for, much like the individuals in the book.

Karen Tei Yamashita

Date of Birth: January 8, 1951 (Oakland, California) (57 years of age)
Education: Carleton College in (Minnesota)
Graduated Phi Beta Kappa with degrees in English and Japanese Literature
Yamashita spent her junior year I college as an exchange student at Waseda University in Tokyo.
Occupation: Japanese American writer, Associate Professor of Literature at University of California, Santa Cruz. Karen Tei Yamashita teaches creative writing and Asian American Literature.
Books: Circle K Cycles (2001), Tropic of Orange (1997, Brazil-Maru (1992), and Through the Arc of the Rainforest (1990)
Karen Tei Yamashita is a Japanese American writer as well as a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Yamashita grew up in Los Angeles California before attending Carleton College in Minnesota. She also spent a year in Japan as an exchange student as a junior. In 1975 Yamashita moved to Brazil where she lived for nine years in Sao Paolo. In Brazil she was able to study Japanese immigration to Brazil. Also, in Brazil she met her current husband Ronaldo Lopes de Oliveira (Architect). In 1984 the family, Karen, Ronaldo, and her two children Jon and Jane moved back to California. They currently live in Santa Cruz, California.
In California Yamashita continued to write short stories and plays. Her first book was published in 1990, Through the Arc of the Rainforest by the Coffee House Press. She received awards for the book, the American Book Award and the Janet Hedinger Kafka Award. Later in 1992, Yamashita’s second book was published, Brazil Maru, followed by Tropic of Orange (1997), and Circle K Cycles (2001).
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Tei_Yamashita http://faculty.washington.edu/kendo/yamashita.html http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/yamashita_karen_tei.html

Karen Tei Yamashita – Bibliography

Kusei: An Endangered Species. Yamashita, Karen Tei, and Karen Mayeda. 1986.
Yamashita, Karen Tei. Brazil-Maru. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1993.
Yamashita, Karen Tei. Circle K Cycles. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2001
Yamashita, Karen Tei. O-Men: An American Kabuki. 1978
Yamashita, Karen Tei. “The Dentist and the Dental Hygenist.” Hermes. 55 (1995)

Yamashita, Karen Tei. “The Orange.” Chicago Review. 39.3.4 (1993)

Yamashita, Karen Tei. Through the Arc of the Rainforest. Minneapolis: Coffee House
Press, 1990.
Yamashita, Karen Tei. Tropic of Orange. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1993.

Karen Tei Yamashita Annotated Bibliography

Campbell, John R.B. 1991. Through the arc of the rain forest (book review). The New York Times Book Review. 16.
In the article referenced above, Mr. Campbell reviews Yamashita’s first book- Through the Arc of the Rain Forest. He speaks positively about the book for the most part saying Yamashita “captures… the complexity of Brazilian culture.” He also comments on her ability to show readers the terrible truth of reality in a poetic fashion.

Chuh, Kandice. Of Hemispheres and Other Spheres: Navigating Karen Tei Yamashita’s Literary World. American Literary History. 18.3: 618-37.
Chuh discusses how Yamashita’s novels have impacted Asian-American and hemispheric studies through her writings on Brazil and a national identity. She analyzes how Yamashita’s works challenge us to look at what drives people and how their desires affect individuals as well as the community around them.

Kaye, Janet. 1998. Tropic of orange (book review). The New York Times Book Review. 103 (1):16.
This article is a book review of Tropic of Orange and it appears in The New York Times Book Review, published weekly. The author gives credit to Karen Tei Yamashita for being witty and giving us a plot that allows us to see that some individuals (in this case Emi & Gabriel) can be so consumed in their own lives, they don’t notice the destruction of the world around them. The critical part of the article comes when she writes that the book becomes disappointing toward the end with a little too much formal controversy.

Lee, Sue-Im. 2007. “We Are Not the World”: Global Village, Universalism, and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange(Critical Essay). MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 53.3: 501-527.
Lee examines how the book looks at the globalist “we” and how it affects universalism. In Tropic of Orange, Yamashita strips people of their “material inequalities” so they will see how similar all people really are. Lee also discusses the representation of a global village in Tropic that is based on logic of consumers, meaning that because people can taste another culture’s food or see it’s people, they have experienced another culture.

Mallot, J. Edward. 2004.”Signs taken for wonders, wonders taken for dollar signs: Karen Tei Yamashita and the commodification of miracle.” ARIEL 35.3-4: 115(23). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. CIC University of Illinois Chicago. 17 Feb. 2008.
The basic style of Mallot’s piece is quoting a passage from Yamashita’s books and describing what is represents in the real world. He discusses Yamashita’s representation of Brazil, economic situations, money, commodities and even men. He concludes that people will try to exploit miracles because consumers will insist on having them.

Rauch, Molly E. 1998. “Tropic of Orange.” The Nation 266. n7. 28(3). Expanded Academic ASAP. Gale. CIC University of Illinois Chicago. 17 Feb. 2008
Throughout the article, Rauch discusses oranges, from the one on Gabriel’s ranch to the shipment of spiked oranges from Brazil that lead to the freeway destruction. She refers to the book as a collage in which Yamashita has given us seven days and thrown the lives of seven people on a path to entanglement with metaphors operating untamed.

Rody, Caroline. 2000. Impossible voices: ethnic postmodern narration in Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest. Contemporary Literature. 41.4: 618-41.
This article looks at the post modern use of narrative voices in Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest and Morrison’s Jazz. They give us new perspective on narrators, abandoning the know-it-all that is much too common. Instead, they use a mystery person who seems to know just enough.

Shan, Te-hsing. 2006. Interview with Karen Tei Yamashita. Amerasia Journal. 32:3: p123-142.
This is an interview with Karen Tei Yamashita, in which she talks about her family as well as her heritage.

It’s 2052 in Los Angeles. The setting of this novel is much like the one we see in Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”; resources are scarce, there is a large division between the rich and the poor, and world has become increasingly violent.
Francie is 19 years old and lives with her Auntie Annie and her aunt’s boyfriend, Rohn, who make deliveries on the black market for a living. Francie’s parents died of a disease when she was just a little girl. In the beginning of the story Rohn disappears while on a delivery with Annie and Francie. He tries to illegally purchase water from Max the Magician. Annie and Francie are unsure of what has happened to Rohn but they believe he might have been arrested. Francie’s aunt has a hard time coping with his loss, and we see her begin to slip into a state of hopelessness. She starts to gain weight, not care about her appearance, ultimately becoming lazy. On the other hand, Francie quickly gets over his disappearance because she feels it is useless to grieve; there are other things that need to be done besides to continue worrying.
Francie’s plants represent her Auntie Annie in a strange way. When Annie’s source of hope, Rohn, is gone Francie becomes frustrated with her constantly grieving aunt and describes her garden as a complete mess. “I wanted to rip them out by their roots and be done with them. I watered and fed them instead,” she says. She begins to take care of her plants like never before around the time when she explains her concern for her aunt when she leaves to search for Rohn.
Already we begin to see that hope is a major theme throughout this novel. Despite the chaotic world around her, Francie has never-ending hope for the future much like Lauren in Parable of the Sower. Shortly after Rohn’s disappearance when Francie was making a delivery, she is hit by a care leaving her hospitalized for 5 weeks. Following her long hospital stay, Francie gets an itch to do something different with her life. Feeling the need to do something, she decides to go back to college and move out. Also, around this point in the novel her aunt makes the decision to move out of the bungalow her, Francie, and Rohn once lived in as a family. We see a parallel relationship between her aunt and Francie’s plants again. Francie sells her plants saying, “Even my plants sometimes began to seem inert rather than full of life. I still loved them, but I needed a vacation from their demands.” It is time for Francie to move on and begin a life of her own. She has to get away from her aunt just as she does her plants because they may be holding her down. It will be interesting to see where Francie’s unusual sense of hope will take her.

Biography

Cynthia Kadohata 

            Cynthia Kadohata was born in Chicago in 1956 to two Japanese-American parents.  However she did not live in Chicago for a very long time.  A few months after she was born, Kadohata’s father got a job in Georgia as a chicken sexer.  Again when Cynthia was two her father found another chicken tenant job in Arkansas.  The years following she moved from Arkansas to Michigan, then back Chicago.  Finally at age fifteen, Kadohata’s family settled in Los Angeles. 

            Originally Kadohata had no plans to become an author while attending high school in LA.  Her dream job in high school was to be an astronaut.  There was one major problem with her dream, she had severe motion sickness.  Cynthia Kadohata finished high school early and started classes at Los Angeles City College.  After Los Angeles City College she attended the University of Southern California, where she received a degree in journalism.         

            A few months after graduating Cynthia Kadohata was hit by a car while crossing the street.  She broke her collarbone and severely damaged her arm and was unable to live on her own.  Cynthia Kadohata went to Boston to live with her sister while she recovered.  Kadohata began writing and submitting her stories to magazines and newspapers while she was healing.  After four long years of writing stories the New Yorker published one of her stories called Charlie O.  Shortly after getting her story published she was discovered by Andrew Wylie. 

            After joining Andrew Wylie, Kadohata grew tremendously as an author.  She wrote her first published novel, The Floating World and many of her other first few novels with Wylie.  He challenged her, even though she would not want to cooperate for the first few times.

            Later on in Kadohata’s career, she wrote her first children’s book, Kira-Kira.  After years of writing adult novels, Cynthia Kadohata was greatly praised for her children’s literature.  In fact, Kadohata won the 2005 John Newbury award for children’s literature.

            Cynthia Kadohata claims that much of her inspiration for her novels comes from her travels, both as a child and as an adult.  Kadohata said “just thinking about the American landscape and focusing on it, puts me in touch with what I think of as real, essential me.  I have to be in touch with the real, essential me whenever I sit down to write.”  Nothing inspires Cynthia Kadohata more than the road.

            Today Cynthia Kadohata is still living in Los Angeles but is making tours around the United States to promote her books.  Kadohata just released two books in the past two years Weedflower and CRACKER! The Best Dog in Vietnam.  Both of these books are children’s novels.

 Bibliography

28 Jan. 2008 <http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ge-La/Kadohata-Cynthia.html>.

 28 Jan. 2008 http://www.kira-kira.us/cyn.htm. Bibliography

Cynthia Kadohata Bibliography

• The Floating World (1989)
• In the Heart of the Valley of Love (1992)
• The Glass Mountains (1996)
• Kira-Kira (2004)
• Weedflower (2006)
• Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam (2007)

Annotated Bibliography   Works Cited Comer, Krista. “Western Literature At the Cnetury’s End: Sketches in Generation X, Los Angeles, and the Post-Civil Rights Novel.” The Pacific Historical Review 3rd ser. 72 (2003):  405-413. JSTOR. 12 Feb.  This work investigates how the writings of both Cynthia Kadohata and Sandra Ysing Loh comment on politics and culture of the “post-Civil Rights” era.  This work by Comer, in relation to Kadohata, states that she writes about new issues for Japanese Americans.  In particular, the writer describes the “post-internment scramble of Japanese Americans to survive and rebuild their loves” (Comer 408) in Kadohata’s works.  Comer also examines how class warfare, where nonwhites are considered the majority, brings about the “apocalyptic moment” in “In the Heart of the Valley of Love.”  Comer explains the loss of human attachment in Kadohata’s novel.  Comer also writes about the effect of consumer culture on American youth, as reflected in Kadohata’s and Loh’s writings. D’aguiar, Fred. “Review: the Diminutive Epic.” Third World Quarterly 1st ser. 12 (1990):  215-217. JSTOR. 12 Feb. 2008.  This work by D’aguiar discusses the influences of Kadohata’s writing from writers like Kazuo Ishiguro.  He examines the subject matter that is presented in Kadohata’s writing, such as the lives of Japanese Americans and their journey to survive in America. Matsumoto, Valerie. “Review: Pearls and Rocks.” The Women\_Review of Books 2nd ser. 7 (1989):  5-6. JSTOR. 12 Feb. 2008.  This article reviews “The Floating World” by Cynthia Kadohata.  Matsumoto comments on how the immigrant life of Japanese in America is reflected in this novel’s characters and their lives.  She writes about how Katohata shows “the struggles of generations coming to terms with their history.” (Matsumoto 6)

Octavia Estelle Butler Biography
Octavia E. Butler was an only child born June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California. Her father, Laurice, worked as a shoeshine man, while her mother, Octavia M. worked as a maid. Her father died when she was young; therefore Octavia was raised by her mother and grandmother. Octavia grew up in a very racially mixed neighborhood and was diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age. She also grew up in a strict Baptist household. At the age of 12, Octavia first got into writing science fiction after seeing the film “Devil Girl from Mars”. Though she was shy as a child, Octavia overcame her shyness and received her associate degree from Pasadena City College in 1963. She then pursued her education at California State University in Los Angeles and then at UCLA. One of Octavia’s most inspiring workshops was with Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in 1970, which soon followed her first novel, “Crossover”. Butler’s most popular novel was “Kindred” which was published in 1976. “Kindred” was about a black woman who goes back in time to slavery before the Civil War. In 1995 Octavia E. Butler became the first science fiction writer to win the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. Butler moved to Seattle, Washington in 1999. Octavia went through a writers block during after writing the first two novels in the Parable series. In 2005 she published a novel “Fledgling” which helped her to get back on track with a third and last of the Parable trilogy. Unfortunately due to her early death after falling off the stairs in her house and striking her head she was not able to finish her novel. Butler achieved many awards in her lifetime for her writings, including two Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. However, Butler was mostly known for exposing readers to the injustices of society through her metaphors in her science fiction novels. More so than what she shared through her writing, Butler was also a pioneer in a field dominated by white male writers. As a result of this, a scholarship fund was established to help writers of color to attend one of Clarion workshops, where she was inspired and got started.

Octavia E. Butler Bibliography :
In 1974, she started the novel Patternmaster, which became her first published book in 1976, though it would become the fifth in the Patternist series. Over the next eight years, she would publish four more novels in the same story line, though the publication dates of the novels do not match the internal order of the series.
• Wild Seed (1980)
• Mind of my Mind (1977)
• Clay’s Ark (1984)
• Survivor (1978)
• Patternmaster (1976)
In 1979, she published Kindred, a novel that uses the science-fiction staple of time travel to explore slavery in the United States. In this story, Dana, an African American woman, is inexplicably transported from 1976 Los Angeles to early nineteenth century Maryland. She meets her ancestors: Rufus, a white slave holder, and Alice, an African American woman who was born free but forced into slavery later in life.
• Kindred (1979)
Next came Lilith’s Brood, formerly Xenogenesis, novels which are available separately or collected in one volume. They tell the story of the human survivors of an apocalyptic war as they are joined and genetically altered by extraterrestrials that have an affinity for strangers.
• Dawn (1987)
• Adulthood Rites (1988)
• Imago (1989)
And the two collected versions of all three novels:
• Xenogenesis (Hard cover, 1989)
• Lilith’s Brood (Trade Paperback, 2000)
Next came the two Parable novels. These take readers into the world of economic, environmental, and social chaos that we seem to be creating, and they offer a few solutions, both malignant and benign.
• Parable of the Sower (1993)
• Parable of the Talents (1998)
She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in the 2005 novel, Fledgling, a vampire novel with a science-fiction context. Although Butler herself passed Fledgling off as a lark, the novel is connected to her other works through its exploration of race, sexuality, and what it means to be a member of a community. Moreover, the novel continues the theme, raised explicitly in Parable of the Sower, that diversity is a biological imperative.
• Fledgling (2005)
And finally, there is a book of short fiction and essays including title story, Bloodchild, Speech Sounds, The Evening and the Morning and the Night, and others.
• Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)

“In the Heart of the Valley of Love” takes place in a similar setting as that of “The Parable of the Sower.” Francie, the story’s main character, lives in Los Angeles in the 2050’s, a place where crime, violence, and poverty have become the norm throughout most of the United States. Water and gasoline are rationed, education is poor, and fresh food is expensive and difficult to come by. The rich and poor are segregated, as the upper class white live in what is known as “Richtown,” and the poor non-whites live outside of its walls. In general, the world seems to be in chaos. In contrast to Octavia Butler’s novel, Cynthia Kadohata makes the setting around her characters a mere backdrop, her focus being the character’s emotions. Amongst these emotions, as indicated by the title of the book, love and hope are the core to Kadohata’s novel.
The relationships presented in the novel have become integral to the plot. Every character encountered thus far has, in one form or another, a significant other. The book starts with Auntie Annie and Rohn taking Francie with them on their deliveries. Rohn is only Auntie’s second boyfriend and she is deeply in love with him. Auntie Annie is Francie’s caregiver so naturally this relationship has become an aspiration for Francie.
Jewel, a coworker of Francie at the school newspaper, has a boyfriend named Teddy. Teddy is abusive to Jewel and Francie first meets him after getting out of jail, but nonetheless, Jewel is in love with him. While Francie personally does not like Teddy, she aspires to what they have: each other. Similarly, Emmy and Hank, Jewel’s parents, have a strange relationship. They seem to almost ignore one another, but in Francie’s eyes, they are also in love. Jewel comments that they haven’t had sex in years, but Francie sees something different: “I thought they did have sex, in a slightly ashamed way ashamed not because of how much they didn’t want each other but because of how much they did.” Francie’s recognition of their need for one another, despite their actions towards each other, alludes to the idea that Francie herself is ready to accept love.
When Francie decides to take some classes at a local community college, she meets a boy named Mark. Mark works for the school newspaper and they quickly become boyfriend and girlfriend. It is too early to tell if they are in love, but the dominant theme about the need and importance of love leaves the reader predicting (and hoping) that this will work out for Francie.
Hope and love go hand in hand in the early stages of this novel. The scene where Francie, Mark, and Jewel celebrate Easter with Rohn’s relatives sticks out in my mind. Francie did not want to go, but went along for the respect she has for Rohn. The setting is described as annoying: a little girl is waving an egg in Francie’s face, a woman is playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” on a guitar. But Francie says, “So what were we all doing there? It was just that my aunt had fallen in love with Rohn, and Rohn’s sister and her husband had fallen in love, and his parents had once been in love, and so on. That’s why I was standing there watching Alma wave an Easter egg in my face.” Francie wants to believe, and has hope, in the possibility of love, but she does not have it yet, leaving her alone and annoyed. This excerpt not only shows just how much hope she has for love and a better way of life for everyone around her, but that she wants it for herself too. It is going to be interesting to see where this hope leads and if, ultimately, it leads Francie to finding love.